ROME – FRANZ ROSATI Posted On: February 21, 2012
“Franz Rosati is a sound and media artist, focusing his research on real-time A/V, Visual Music projects and installations following an aesthetic idea based on discontinuity of aural and visual patterns avoiding any kind of repetition through the use of chaos mathematics, generative and stochastic processes. He uses his own custom made software for real-time micro-montage and sound elaboration in the microscopic time scale to realise compositions and performances based on aural and visual matter’s constant metamorphosis.” Q: Your musical practice takes different forms, you play on your own, you do installations, and then there is your collaborative work. What would you say is the common link? A: In my approach to music the interaction with other instruments is paramount. I used to play the bass when I was younger and became heavily influenced by prog rock, especially bands like Area, King Crimson and This Heat. I have also dabbled with the guitar and even had a go at the violin, but I dropped all that in my late adolescence. At the same time, I was always something of a computer geek so I just combined these two different passions of mine, not in the sense of recording music at home, but by writing software that would enable me to develop my own musical voice. I always had a DIY approach to music. I even tried making my own musical instruments, but I am not very talented in that respect. In terms of the sound I work with, I al-
ways try to utilize real sounds and what I do is mostly based on field recordings. For instance, two of the most beautiful sounds I am currently working with at present are that of a cicada I’ve recorded in Canada last summer and which is reminiscent of an electric drill, and the sound from a sugar factory in Toronto. I have only ever used synthetic sounds very early on in two releases, but it something I am not too keen on. From a visual side of things, though, I do the exact opposite. I never use concrete images but only what I develop with computer graphics. Q: Let’s stay on field recordings, considering the way you transform sounds, and the way in which you mix natural and man made or industrial sounds, what is it that you find in them that you cannot get from synthetic sounds? A: I always strive to reflect the organic quality of sound in my own music, which is something that synthetic sounds cannot really reproduce. Working within a framework of dynamic stochastic synthesis, as I did with Fields (out on the Brusio netlabel), I am able to reproduce a greater variety of sounds, which would be lost in favour of repetition, and recurring patterns, if I opted for synthetic sounds. There is greater dynamism within concrete sounds. To make an analogy if you consider a tree, you can categorize it by analysing its characteristics, but within the same treetops, for example, there is an infinite variety of ways in which leaves grow and this is what interests me. Having said that when I utilize concrete sounds and field recordings I am not concerned whether their original sources are still recognisable as such within the
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Images courtesy of Franz Rosati: Taken in the 80s in the Casal Bruciato and Pietralata districts of Rome.
end product. On the contrary I like the idea of blurring the lines. However, the organic quality of these sounds is never lost in the mind of the listener. Q: Most of the reviews of your latest album Theory Of Vortex Sound point out that all the field recordings are virtually unrecognisable, was that your original intention? A: At times it all plays out as a kind of game. If I state that I have used a number of field recordings and samples, the listener tends to try and uncover hidden melodies. Things are not easily recognisable but I don’t just do it for the sake of it. I am interested in things which feel incomplete and unfinished, not because that is how they were made but as a result of a process or erosion, which is parallel to the time I take to process the music I make. I like to think of sound as something “in ruins”. The music from 600 years ago that we listen to nowadays, for instance, is not the same music that was composed all those centuries ago. This doesn’t mean that it is inferior, just that it has been subject to “erosion”, because instruments are different, tuning is different etc. The title of the album is taken from a scientific text on the mechanics of fluids. Sound travels like fluids through pressure. There are an infinite number of different sounds which coexist and, in a similar way, fluids carry an infinite number of different elements. One can discover all sorts of things by magnifying a snapshot of a waterflow. I’ve ap-